


Take the soul. Leave the body and leave it cold.

by cantheysuffer



Series: This will never end cause I want more. [1]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Coffee Shops, Dark, Eventual Fluff, Human Thor, Killing, Loki Needs a Hug, M/M, References to Sexual Acts But Not Written as Porn (Unfortunately), Reincarnation, Temporary Character Death, Thor Is Not Stupid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-24
Updated: 2014-02-24
Packaged: 2018-01-13 14:31:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 11,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1229950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cantheysuffer/pseuds/cantheysuffer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thor was supposed to be perfect. Loki can't figure out how to stop killing him. </p><p>A dark reincarnation fic diverging from the events of The Avengers.</p><p>-<br/><i>Sometimes Loki sought Thor out. </i></p><p>  <i>Other times he waited and let Thor find him. </i></p><p>  <i>It always ended the same. </i><br/> <br/><i>No matter who Thor had been born to or what he lived as, it was always the heir to Asgard's throne that stared defiantly up at Loki in those final moments. </i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [buttcushions](https://archiveofourown.org/users/buttcushions/gifts).



> Happy belated birthday [Ally](http://i-am-thor-odinson.tumblr.com/).
> 
> Yours always,  
> Theodore Roosevelt xoxo
> 
> For maximum pain read this with "A Thousand Years" by Sting on a permanent loop.
> 
> I hope I got the angst and fluff ratio down. If not, well, it was good for me. 
> 
> Warning for graphic violence, deaths, and depictions of corpses, emotionally compromised worldviews I don't endorse, and uncomfortable sexual encounters I don't know how to categorize, all with horrible consequences. If there's anything I should be tagging or warning for that I'm not already I am very sorry and please let me know.
> 
> This fic revolves around Thor and Loki's relationship, with a heavy focus on Loki's point of view.

“The humans think us immortal,” Loki said while pacing S.H.I.E.L.D's floating fortress, conspicuously on a different side of the glass prison than the one he had started the conversation on. Thor replaced Loki inside the prison, unwillingly of course. 

Thor's barely restrained fury proved useless against the cell walls. His rage only served to entice Loki, coaxing him to respond in reckless kind. “Should we test that?” Loki said flippantly. 

“Stop! Move away please,” Coulson insisted upon stepping into the room and interrupting the conversation of gods. 

There followed a small interruption of no lasting consequence, a momentary pause. Thor and Loki had eternity reserved for different variations of that same conversation. They could test one another, again and again, until the end of time. 

Loki effortlessly disarmed the interference Coulson posed with a feigned surrender, following it up with a distraction of his own. 

Loki vanished, reappearing behind Coulson and stabbing the sceptre through the agent's body. All the while Loki's attention fixated on the real show: Thor's ugly look of seething disillusionment beckoned forth by Coulson sliding to the ground in a ruined heap. 

“NO!” Thor choked out amidst heavy pants. He pounded on the glass cage, fists relentless with a power that could have decimated armour and rendered bone to dust. Here that power only sent a crack through the glass. 

Loki pretended to ignore Thor's protest, striding unaffected to the control panel of the glass prison. He flipped the lid up casually. 

Thor moved to the centre of his cage and braced himself, face set in a hard line. 

The brothers locked eyes across the prison, Thor narrowing his. It was unnecessary to voice the threat; the promise of violence flared wordlessly between them.

Loki pursed his lips, face blank with his own disbelief as he pressed the button that bluffed at sending Thor to his death. Few men of faith had ever known the conviction Loki did in that moment. Thor, perfect prince of Asgard, was untouchable. He did not die. 

In the space of a breath the glass cage, and Thor with it, was gone, plummeting thousands of feet to the ground.

-

It didn't take long to find signs of Thor. 

Loki's eyes flicked impassively over a stamped out path of bent and broken flowers, no doubt made by the enraged pacing of a particular thunder god. After Thor fell Loki had made his way to the cockpit of the aircraft, the sceptre replacing Loki's natural methods of persuasion. A blue sheen ate away the pilot's eyes, rendering him passive and agreeable. The pilot landed S.H.I.E.L.D's floating fortress in the field Thor had been abandoned to, coaxing the aircraft back into the sky as soon as Loki invisibly slipped from its hull. 

Loki's fingers trailed over a particularly crumpled dandelion, the flower head severed from its stalk. A glassy smile smoothed onto Loki's face in ripples. It remained there as he rose fluidly to stand, a hunter drunk on the thrill of their prey nearby. 

Loki followed the path straight to Thor. 

Out in the open Thor could have been mistaken for easy quarry, but Loki knew the truth. Still, Loki strode confidently up to his brother, relying on Thor's forbearance rather than his own defences to guarantee his protection.

“Brother,” Thor greeted Loki, his booming voice more guarded than usual. His grip tightened on Mjolnir. 

Loki held out his open palms and smiled widely, stalking closer to Thor with long and open strides.  
“So you passed the first test,” Loki's voice grated and chided over what otherwise have been a compliment from another's lips.

“Stop this,” Thor growled in warning. Electricity crackled around them, more out of restraint than intention. The veins in Thor's neck bulged with the effort to hold back the storm that raged inside of him. 

“You always did like tests. Win that maiden's heart, find and hunt down that frost giant,” Loki's clipped voice didn't match the malicious smile warping his face. 

Thor's face grit in wariness; not wariness that Loki might finally harm him, but that he might have to harm his brother. The look burned Loki's veins up from the inside and made his smile grow cruel and hollow. 

“What changed?” Loki managed to keep his voice calm, but his eyes narrowed, searching for the answers that would slice him raw. 

“You did,” Thor said. His eyebrows bunched up in concentration, trying to calculate the amount of force he should use to contain Loki. What was the right amount to incapacitate his brother without causing lasting harm? It was an impossible feat; even simply restraining Loki might cause him mental anguish. There had to be another way. 

“But it is not too late,” Thor added, allowing himself a flicker of hope and the ghost of a smile he wasn't quite ready to commit to. 

“Oh Thor,” Loki chided. His smile fell away into nothingness, leaving behind only an empty face. It was the same face that had watched Thor for the fraction of a second between pressing the button and the glass cage vanishing to hurtle to the ground. Loki was empty in his conviction, because that was all there was: an absolute certainty that Thor would pass. The golden son of Asgard failed at nothing. 

“Test two,” Loki purred, words barely audible against his heavy breathing evoked by a treacherous excitement. 

Loki moved, leaping forward. Thor lunged to meet him, Mjolnir falling out of his fingers and dropping to the ground with a harmless thud. The largest threat was containing Loki without injuring his spirit, a task the hammer could not aid. 

Thor collided with Loki and fell right through him, the clone vanishing in a shiver of gold and green seidr. 

Thor's chest hit the ground with a thud, Loki's reappearance above him masked by the sound. 

Loki struck quickly and efficiently. He plunged his sceptre into Thor's exposed back, fist jamming into the handle when the blade cleared Thor's body and impaled the ground below. 

“Will you ever not fall for that?” Loki asked in a clipped voice, unmoved as Thor coughed up blood and spasmed against the sceptre run through him. 

Loki jerked his weapon upwards, blade ripping through flesh and muscle, ramming bone along the way in a terribly violent rendition of the children's game Operation.

“You really are a witless oaf,” Loki said with a considerable sigh, allotted for show. 

Loki wrenched the sceptre out with considerable effort, throwing his weight backward to free the blade from the stringy organs and bone it had tangled in. The weapon came out in an eruption of blood and torn flesh. Loki held it blade first to the grass, wiping the blood off absentmindedly. 

“Hrm, Thor?” Loki said flatly, eyes flickering over his unmoving brother.

“Already unconscious?” Loki rolled his eyes. “Your precious Midgardians have made you weak.”

Loki leaned into the sceptre and prodded Thor with the tip of his boot. 

Nothing happened. 

He smacked Thor with the blunt end of the spear. 

Still nothing. 

Loki arched a single eyebrow in mild surprise. 

Loki unceremoniously slipped to his knees, jerking Thor's head up to rest in his lap. His fingers extended forward of their own accord, hovering over Thor's eyelids. It seemed years since he had been this close to Thor. Decades even. Maybe centuries. 

Loki glanced over his shoulder, finding the field as empty as he expected it to be. It was a fleeting, unnecessary, worry; no one would be interrupting them again. 

He bit his bottom lip and allowed his fingers to seek out Thor's face, at first only resting casually on the prince's golden skin. It was warm and taut beneath his touch.

The sceptre dropped from Loki's spare hand when it too came to rest on Thor's face. The weapon lay forgotten at Loki's side, abandoned in the grass near Mjolnir. 

Loki's fingers wandered, tracing the laughter creases that even when unconscious did not vanish on Thor's perpetually optimistic face. Loki moved with a reverence reserved for sacred objects. The Casket of Ancient Winters. Grungir. Thor Odinson. Somewhere along the line the heir of Asgard had made his way onto Loki's list of precious things. Things worth stealing. Things worth having. Loki's face quirked into a tempestuous smile. 

Each gesture fed a new-found confidence. Loki mapped out the shape of Thor's cheekbones and the hollows beneath them. He discovered Thor's lips caked with blood. Thor's golden hair, soft with battle-worthy plaits someone had woven with care. Memories of someone else's fingers on Thor. Loki undid the braids, humming softly to himself while he did so, the threat that Thor might stir at any moment never far from his mind. Thor could electrocute him without opening his eyes. Loki smiled to himself, a secret pleasure that warmed all the way up to his eyes. 

Loki traced his fingers down Thor's neck, circling his Adam's apple. His fingertips slipped back and forth between the clavicle bones at the top of Thor's chest, imprinting himself there with every fleeting gesture. 

The unconscious part of Loki's mind probably noticed something was amiss earlier. Perhaps Loki had known all along and shut the thought away, denying it vehemently. Whatever had occurred it all came down to the same simple fact: Thor wasn't breathing and Loki could no longer ignore it as his fingers made their way across Thor's still chest. Fraction by fraction Loki's eyebrows began to furrow. 

“Thor?” Loki said, voice intimately soft as the forbidden and illicit touches that he had covered his brother's face, neck, and chest with. 

Loki's hand dared to seek further ground, shaking as it mapped out the expanse of Thor's torso. Eventually it found the hole that Loki had made with the sceptre and when it did Loki's hand slipped all the way through, emerging coated in blood and organ tissue on the other side. 

“Thor?” Loki said at the level of a whisper, but it was not in his ability to keep the degree of the wound a secret any longer. His breathing quickened. 

Loki moved his fingers that were on the wrong side of Thor, staring at them without any sense of recognition. He didn't believe they were there. They were through Thor. Attached to those fingers, Loki's arm was through Thor's body and out his back. And Thor wasn't breathing.

To anyone else Thor's death would have been obvious long before, but it hadn't entered Loki's mind as a possibility. Confronted with the very real sight of his own hand in the gaping hole of Thor's body Loki couldn't explain the situation away. He stiffened in cold dread. 

“No,” Loki hissed, baring his teeth.

“No,” he repeated vehemently. In a trance he slowly pulled his arm out of Thor's body, holding in the building panic that thrashed the limits of his body when his wrist snagged on a jagged bone in the corpse. The corpse. 

Not Thor. 

Couldn't be Thor. 

But it was. 

“NO!” Loki shrieked out between clenched teeth. A wall of green seidr ripped past the confines of his body, lurching forward like a blast of icy wind. 

Loki grabbed Thor's shoulders and shook, screaming over the sounds Thor's squelching insides made. 

Thor wasn't dead. 

He couldn't be. 

He wouldn't be. 

“No,” Loki repeated, this time with a new conviction that did not match the relentless shaking of his body. He wiped frantically at the tears biting down his face, only managing to smear them with a sleeve coated in blood. 

The rest of him undone, a sliver of composure would have to do. 

Someone else might have been swept up by the guilt of killing Thor or frozen in shock by the sight of such gore. Not Loki. For him things had never been clearer; something was terribly wrong with the universe. Somehow the god of thunder had failed. It didn't matter how it had happened and it didn't matter why. Thor's imperfection was going to be their little secret because Loki would write it out of existence, ensuring it had never happened at all.


	2. Chapter 2

Time stopped when Thor died. 

Temporarily died. 

Temporary was the key term, Loki reminded himself with a rue frown. Although the god of thunder wasn't exactly alive either. 

Loki picked his way through the muck and grime of Valhalla's sewers. They were sorely unkempt compared to the sewers of Midgard Loki had hidden away in while plotting his next move against the Avengers. Poorly named, the Avengers hadn't managed to avenge anything. When his priorities shifted Loki slipped undetected from the realm. Shifting priorities, such sanitized words for murder. 

Getting into Valhalla had been slightly more difficult, if only because the god of mischief had never attempted it before. There was always a learning curve to these things. Resurrecting the dead was not meant to be easy, especially the chosen dead who were forever meant to feast inside the golden halls. Forever would be a terribly long time for Thor to ignore Loki in favour of his companions, assuming Loki would be chosen to enter Valhalla upon his death. Very unlikely was stretching the truth. So now that the golden son was dead, the only option was making him not. 

Loki entered the great hall of Valhalla from below, seidr giving him another face and servant's clothing. He crept up through the kitchen and entered the hall with a tray of mead, moving cautiously and on strict alert. 

Not strict enough. 

A heavy hand clamped around Loki's back, crowding him into a muscled chest. Loki gasped and his lungs filled with the sweet scent of ozone and burning. 

“Brother!” Thor exclaimed. Loki tried to jerk backwards, Thor's iron grip rendering his escape unsuccessful.

Loki cleared his throat to inform Thor he was wrong, that he'd mistaken him for someone else, but Loki made the mistaking of looking up. Thor's eyes, wide and brimming with foolish happiness, snared Loki as effectively as any rope. 

“How did you know?” Loki said in a hushed whisper. 

“I can always see you, Loki.” Thor grinned and squeezed Loki's shoulder affectionately. 

“Why are you so happy to see me?” Loki said, too disarmed to remember to hide his incredulous shock. 

“I did not expect to see you again so soon. I was certain it would be centuries,” Thor beamed. 

Loki's eyebrows crept closer together in a furrow, mind whipping through the possibilities and scrutinizing every option. In the end he settled on the truth, just to see what would happen. “Thor, you are dead,” Loki said carefully. 

“Why else would I be in Valhalla?” Thor gave Loki a little shove, dredging up the physical memories of a thousand affectionate brotherly gestures between them, all permanently distorted by the blood of Loki's last brutal act.

“Right,” Loki said stiffly. One painful truth out of the way. “How did you die?” He asked warily.

“You killed me,” Thor said simply, pleased expression unchanging. 

Loki shifted his fingertips, seeking out the comfort of the seidr that collected there beneath his veins. “So why are you so happy to see me?” Loki repeated.

“I have forgiven you, brother,” Thor said. 

Loki took a step backwards. Thor mirrored his movement, stepping forward in turn. 

Thor reached out and grabbed the back of Loki's neck, a familiar action Loki fought not to relax into. 

“Is something wrong, Loki?” Thor asked, his previous grin replaced by a look of confusion and concern.

“No,” Loki lied hastily. 

Loki faked a smile to mask the gnawing fear he felt at the terrible truth that was then apparent: Valhalla had rotted Thor's brains. His body was being possessed by a deluded sycophant. Eternal resting place of the gods - more like brainwash emporium. Perhaps Thor was even still in there, drugged out of his mind. One could only hope. 

“Everything is fine,” Loki said. It wasn't, but it would be. “Do you like it here?” he asked innocently. 

“It is fantastic!” Thor exclaimed. He slipped his hand down the back of Loki's neck to rest it on his brother's shoulder. “Everything I could ever want or ask for! Aside from my friends, but now you are here!” Thor went on, grin once more in its established place.

“Well I am so very glad to be here with you.” Loki forced a fake grin in return. “Perhaps you could show me what chambers in Valhalla are like? All this excitement, and I find myself tired,” he said, yawning for emphasis. “I did not realize the dead tired. There are so many things you will have to teach me Thor.” Loki spoke quickly to mask the false eagerness. The tender admiration had once been real, but now it was used for tortured purposes. Times when Loki had meant such admiration with sincerity prickled under his skin uncomfortably. 

“Of course. Come, you may stay in my chambers until we find one for you tomorrow,” Thor offered. 

“Perfect,” Loki said. 

-

Thor's bedroom was secluded in a great wing of the palace in Valhalla. Fit for a prince, and a veritable array of crimes one would never be caught for. 

“Stay. Tell me a story,” Loki prompted as he kicked off his boots and lay down clothed on the covers of Thor's bed. 

Thor crawled across the bed and lay down next to him, head propped up in his palm. “What kind of story?”

“Tell me of one of your adventures.”

“You have heard them all,” Thor laughed pleasantly. The sound sent shivers up Loki's spine. 

“I never tire of them,” Loki said softly. 

“I am sure that is not true. But soon I will have new adventures. Perhaps you will even accompany on them,” Thor replied eagerly. 

“If you would like,” Loki replied casually.

“I would.” 

Loki could feel the weight of Thor's expectant gaze upon him. It was not the first time Loki languished under such a weight. Raised on praise Thor had never understood that others sometimes considered their own failure. Thor's effortless conviction would have been contagious had it not eaten away at Loki's self esteem. Trying to get too close to the sun leaves burns that don't heal. 

“Tell me about future adventures then, ones you would like to do together,” Loki said, fighting to keep his face blank. 

Thor welcomed the encouragement with a “very well,” that was far too humble for the situation.

Loki lay perfectly still as Thor told him about how they would explore Valhalla together. There must be forests beyond the palace walls, and discovering what lived in them would surely be an adventure. Without princely duties they could lose themselves in the forest for weeks. Thor hesitated upon accidentally referencing their life in Asgard, but Loki pretended not to notice. 

Loki nodded attentively, soon falling into the brooding silence and slight nods he knew were all that was required of him in moments such as these. While Thor continued on in earnest, slurring his words carelessly now and then either from excitement or tiredness, Loki's thoughts meandered through a maze of other potential adventures. Espionage. A red herring ploy. Threats of violence. Actual violence. He needed to get Thor out of Valhalla. 

Loki casually slipped closer to Thor on the bed. Thor smiled and continued talking, becoming more animated with his brother's direct attention. 

Loki played with a strand of golden hair on Thor's shoulder. He eased his hand up Thor's neck, arching it to play with Thor's beard, nodding encouragingly to a story about mermaids. By the time Thor recognized the smoke of seidr Loki's hand was already covering his mouth and nostrils. 

Thor's eyes had a fraction of a second to widen in surprise before they fell shut and he slumped forward in sleep. 

Loki constricted his fingers around Thor's mouth, closing his eyes to concentrate as he muttered a litany of ancient words under his breath. A trickle of sweat dripped down his brow. 

Green flashed around Loki's palm, casting the room in humming seidr light. 

Thor's body sunk deeper into the bed, truly empty once again when Loki pulled a chunk of crackling blue rock out of Thor's mouth. The soul radiated with energy its temporary host couldn't contain, seeping ozone into the air. 

“Everything will be fine,” Loki hissed in a heady whisper, shoving the rock into his pocket before it charred off his fingertips.


	3. Chapter 3

Even in his pocket the soul host burned Loki's skin, scalding it with excess heat and electricity. It wouldn't be long before Thor's soul ate up the rock and he burned away into nothing more than scattered good wishes and optimism, lost in the infinity of the universe. 

Staying in Valhalla was out of the question. Returning to Asgard similarly so. Loki had listed off each realm on his fingertips, but in the end it was convenience rather than rationale that brought Loki back to Midgard. 

It had been easy to find a pregnant human woman, the realm teeming with them. Loki crumpled the rock, soul fleeting to take root in the growing foetus, and then took up the relentless act of waiting. 

-

Loki made himself a home of the shadows and alleyways. 

He lost track of the nights he had fallen asleep against the brick wall outside Thor's bedroom, the bedroom Thor had been given after being born into a fragile mortal body. Loki would close his eyes wistfully, forgetting himself amidst the lull of his brother's snores. 

It was a palace, Loki's throne the cracks in the street, the gutters, the rubble, and it was built on the simple foundation that Thor was no longer dead. Thor's life was the single truth Loki's world revolved around; everything else could go to hel.

There were the bleachers that Loki sat on like an ordinary Midgardian human when, naturally, Thor grew to excel in sports. Soccer. Hockey. Rugby. Loki learned all the names from scraps of conversation he picked up when he was pretending to not watch Thor. During the day, out in public, Loki wore a seidr crafted face. In the night he always wore his own. 

Some nights he would steal inside Thor's bedroom, glimmering with seidr as he phased through the bricks. Loki would stand over the head of Thor's bed to memorize his face and every unconscious gesture. 

Was that Thor-like enough, the precise insufferable blend of oafish and endearing? Nothing less would suffice. 

Loki stopped that particular practice when Thor reached the age of fourteen. It had become harder and harder for Thor's human host parents to convince him that the man that walked through walls, the one with the hungry eyes that sometimes stroked his face but never ever said a word, was a reoccurring nightmare. 

After that Thor complained of the man lurking outside his window, but there were always men outside. 

Years ticked by on Midgard, mere wasted heartbeats to Loki. 

To Thor they meant so much more. 

Everything was a litany of firsts, or so Thor thought without his memories. Those were peculiarly absent. 

Loki insistently waited, lips pursed in a hard line, for recognition to dawn on Thor's face during the rare hauntings when Loki allowed Thor to catch him staring. It never did. Instead of the open warmth Thor shared with everyone else, Thor reserved for Loki a wary resignation. 

-

“I know you're out there,” a seventeen year old Thor said into the night, laying flat on his back in bed and staring resolutely at the ceiling. His voice trailed through the open window. 

Outside, sitting beneath the window, Loki arched an eyebrow. He said nothing. 

“I'm not afraid,” Thor went on.

Loki took a cigarette out of his suit pocket, the tip springing to life with green fire. Years spent on Midgard had left him nostalgically fond of some of their more tolerable customs. Loki lacked the appropriate frame of reference for the nostalgia, but immortality weighed on him in such a way that everything seemed fleeting, quaint, and more tragically beautiful than it would have otherwise. 

“You're just a coward, hiding out there in the dark,” Thor said, louder this time.

Loki sucked on the cigarette, filling his lungs with the lethal smoke for the temporary amusement it brought him. Loki could come close to the mortals, live amongst them, but he would never die like them. Their frailty tickled his debauched humour. “Is that what you think I am? A coward?” Loki mused aloud.

Thor's eyes widened. It was not the first time he had taunted the shadows, but it was the first time something in the dark had spoken back. 

Thor cleared his throat, undeterred by his racing heart. Fear would have sent most humans back under their covers, but not Thor. Never Thor. “Yeah. Slinking around in the dark like some mangy stray. Whatever you're going to do, just do it already,” Thor said, forcibly ignoring the slight waver.

“Why are you of the mind that I intend to do something?” Loki's slick voice sifted through the dark. He rose to stand, tracing the windowsill with his fingers as ardently as if he were carding his hands through Thor's blonde hair. 

“What else would you be here for?” Thor snapped, sitting up in the bed. He didn't yet dare to stare out the window, but he was gathering his courage. Weighing his odds. 

Thor slipped his bare feet onto the cold wood floor. The stranger outside was an adult, god how old was he? He'd been there for as long as Thor could remember. But, he was lanky. In the glances Thor had caught of him he was wispy and thin as smoke and at seventeen, Thor had begun to grow into some muscle. The odds might be in his favour. Maybe not. Thor matched his racing heart with a reckless grin. “Well?” Thor growled, riling himself up. He took a step towards the window, bracing himself. 

He was met with silence. 

Thor walked to the window and with his right hand yanked it all the way open, his left slamming down on the sill. His fingers fell on top of Loki's, causing Thor to jerk in surprise, but he stubbornly forced his hand to stay put. Both of them did. 

Thor held his breath as he looked up and forcefully locked eyes with Loki through the open window, nothing between them now. It was the first time they had actually stared at one another. Thor inhaled sharply at the colour of Loki's eyes, up close toxic green. 

“You always this slow?” Thor said roughly, bristling as he exhaled just as sharply. 

“The irony is astounding,” Loki purred, breathing out smoke with every wretched syllable. 

“Just either do whatever the fuck you came here to do, or go the fuck away and never come back,” Thor said stiffly. He pulled his hand back then. Before it had been a matter of courage, but the longer he kept it there it had begun to feel disturbingly intimate. 

“You dislike me?” Loki asked, face falling into a still emptiness. 

“That's the understatement of the year,” Thor growled. His adrenaline raced through his body but his heart rate fell into a steady rhythm, emboldened by how very nonthreatening the darkness on the other side of the window was being. “You're a monster, preying on kids.”

Loki's eyebrows bunched together in an eerie display of concern. It appeared out of place on his gaunt features, but the concern was for himself so it was right at home. 

Loki lowered his eyes to stare at his hands, still lingering on the windowsill. “Monster,” Loki whispered. “You think I am the monster... but your parents did not warn you of me. No, you told them and they did not believe you.” Loki looked up slowly, glancing at Thor. Searching his face. “This is different.”

“I am so glad you've never spoken before, I am already sick of it,” Thor said between grit teeth. “Last warning.”

“It could always be different,” Loki's voice was haunted by a peculiar conviction, the sinking knowledge that they were not bound by fate. 

He wasn't destined to be in Thor's shadow. 

Even in this mortal form, where Thor clearly hated him, it didn't have to be this way. 

The knowledge came with the weightless relief of freedom, but freedom can be a treacherous thing. A dangerous thing. 

Loki reached out to caress Thor's cheek with the back of his thumb, mimicking the gestures that he'd relaxed into willingly in their youth. 

Thor jerked back, grabbing Loki's hand and twisting it the wrong way. 

In an instant Loki had his leg up on the windowsill. In the next he was in Thor's bedroom.

Thor lunged at him. If they'd both been human he would have been stronger. They weren't. 

Loki threw Thor to the ground, straddling him effortlessly. Thor's fists landed uselessly on Loki's body, barely eliciting a reaction. He kept beating into him, fighting against his own bafflement. 

“Do not worry Thor, it will be different,” Loki said softly. He allowed himself an earnest expression because Thor would not remember it, a fleeting look of wonder and concern. “I will do better next time. I will do better by you.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Thor screamed. 

Loki slipped his hands around Thor's neck. 

“DAD! MO-” Thor's words crumpled with his windpipe as Loki crushed it.

Loki shoved a chunk of rock into Thor's gasping mouth, gagging him with it. When the host was securely in place, pressed between Thor's teeth, Loki snapped his neck in a single fluid motion.


	4. Chapter 4

This time Loki stayed away. This time Loki did everything right, but Thor wasn't his alone to ruin.

On the days Loki couldn't handle his gaping emptiness he made do by watching Thor, always from a distance and careful not to be seen. Twenty years of careful, set up to be ruined in a heartbeat. A single bad decision. Or maybe it had never been a decision either of them made, but fate. 

-

Loki leaned against the brick wall of the drugstore, hiding behind the smoke of his cigarette. His suit crinkled as he shifted, trying to make himself comfortable. It was an exhaustive task. Loki was perpetually uncomfortable, a crick in his neck, as he stiffly waited for Thor's class in the university building across the street to end. Just one glance. Just one hit. Loki shivered in anticipation. 

At ten past twelve Thor walked through the door, striding with a familiar rigid purpose. 

Thor jaywalked across the street, barely pausing to check for traffic. His eyes bore straight ahead, stiff with a determination that didn't match his scruffy jeans and the ironic plastic yellow glasses balancing on the bridge of his nose. The checkered scarf. The scruffy beard. Loki lost himself in Thor's mortal decorations, startling back into himself when Thor stopped in front of him. 

“Hello, sir,” Thor said formally. 

Loki's knees threatened to give away right then and there. He took a slow drag on his cigarette, wasting time as his eyes flickered over Thor. “Hello,” Loki replied evenly. 

“I was wondering if you might be willing to buy me some alcohol from that store over there. I turn twenty-one in a few months, and well,” Thor said, shrugging awkwardly. Loki knew he did, aware of the exact minute Thor had been born. Even mortal, Thor was consistently truthful. 

“Yes, of course,” Loki caught himself saying as relief swept through him. He didn't have the slightest idea as to how he would go about it, but if Thor trusted him to buy him some alcohol, he could manage it. 

“Great,” Thor said, stepping closer into the alley so the exchange would go unseen. “Um can you get me a few cans of four loko? Any flavour,” Thor said as he fumbled with his wallet. He held a few crumpled bills out to Loki. “You can keep the change.” 

Loki stared at the paper money, arching a single eyebrow. “No, that is quite alright.” He'd never had a use for human currency before and surely Thor would find need for it at some point. Loki disappeared into the drugstore without another word, cigarette abandoned in the alley and sizzling behind him. 

-

“Here you are,” Loki said, holding out the bag to Thor after turning the corner. It had only been necessary to bespell one person with his sceptre. The cashier had plied Loki with the alcohol after his eyes had been eaten away by the blue glow.

Thor looked up from kicking at a pebble around with his shoe, facing warming into a genuine grin.  
“Thank you. Look, I really should pay you back,” Thor said, trying to stuff his money into Loki's hand while taking the bag. 

“No, no bother,” Loki said, fishing out another cigarette from his pack and lighting it deftly between his fingers. 

Thor looked him over, straightening his glasses as he did so, eyebrows furrowing as he turned something over in his mind. 

Loki resisted the urge to tell him to stop thinking when it was clearly hurting him so, taking another drag on the cigarette to keep his mouth occupied. 

“No sir, I really ought to.” Thor hesitated, glancing around the empty alleyway. 

Thor took a step forward, placing the bag of alcohol on the floor. “I could pay for it in another way, if you won't take cash?” Thor's voice rose at the end, his usual reckless grin probing the edges of his lips. 

“Mm, what would that be?” Loki hummed, not following, but pleased all the same with the attention. 

Thor sunk down to his knees in front of Loki, glancing up at him expectantly for confirmation. 

Loki arched a single eyebrow, laughing softly. It was a sharp sound, all rough inhales, riddled with disbelief. The golden sun, on his knees in the dirt and the grime. Crawling through the back alleys of Midgard. Debasing himself all for Loki's pleasure. The thoughts cut abruptly short when Thor's fingers found their way to the zipper on Loki's pants. 

Loki's eyes widened, head tilting down to stare in frozen horror. 

Norns, where had he gone wrong this time? 

Thor's hand made its way into Loki's pants, fingers expertly slipping Loki's underwear down, and fisting around the root of Loki's cock. 

Loki jerked at the familiar calloused hand put to new use. 

“Like that?” Thor said, running his hand lazily down the shaft of Loki's cock. 

Something had gone horribly wrong. 

Words burned and withered on the back of Loki's tongue, none of them adequate. There was no refusal strong enough. No admonition that could erase the feel of his brother's hand sliding up and down his cock, slicking it up with his own precome now that his traitorous cock stirred to the attention. 

They were both damned. The knowledge coursed through Loki in a cold dread, filling his veins with ice. 

“This okay?” Thor asked. Without waiting for an answer Thor lined Loki's cock up to his face as he stroked, the tip pressing against the opening of his lips. 

Before Thor could take him in Loki slipped a hand under Thor's jaw. 

Loki watched Thor working his cock impassively, bracing his index and middle fingers around Thor's neck. 

Loki wrenched Thor's head backwards, listening for the crack as his neck snapped, comforting himself with the consolation that he wouldn't have to burn the image of Thor sucking him off out of the back of his eyelids. He was safe from that, for now. 

Loki barely managed to stuff the rock into Thor's mouth before his heart stopped beating, made negligent by his own shock and discomfort.

Loki stared down at Thor's corpse, willing himself to memorize every mistake. 

He could have said no. 

He could have stopped it, at any point. 

At so many points. 

He hadn't needed to kill Thor. 

Except he had. 

Like the secret of Thor's failure, Loki couldn't have allowed this impossibility to exist. In the wake of his brother's warm corpse Loki vowed to retain Thor's dignity, guard it reverently, for as long as he could.


	5. Chapter 5

Killing Thor the first time had been a terrible mistake. 

The second time had been a desperate effort to right that original, impossible, wrong. 

The third, well, Loki couldn't dodge the learning curve. Recreating his relationship with his brother required unforeseen considerations and finesse. A certain amount of blunders were inevitable.

Another body, another life, another opportunity to get it right. But if Loki didn't, no one had to know. 

-

Loki downed his shot. Thor made it to twenty-one for the first time and Loki had taken himself out to celebrate, a misguided notion with a complete lack of foresight at best. 

When Loki arrived at the bar he resigned to drowning his sorrows instead. There really was nothing to celebrate. The longer Thor was alive, the closer Loki came to killing him. 

Loki could already taste the blood on the back of his tongue and itching into his fingertips, restless with an imminent crime. Loki relished the burning relief the alcohol brought him, if only for a second. 

Loki waved the bartender back over, beckoning him with his fingertips. 

Even if no one else remembered, Loki did. That made it real. 

“Another,” Loki said, hearing his own voice peculiarly hazy and out of focus, as if from far away.

He was really killing Thor and he was going to do it again. 

Loki grabbed the drink before the bartender finished pouring it. He downed it, slamming the empty shot glass on the bar with an expectant look. 

“You might want to slow down,” the bartender laughed curiously, searching Loki's face for signs of intoxication. 

Didn't he want to stop killing Thor? 

Loki downed the next shot, exhaling sharply as the liquid burned a line down the back of his throat.

“Ano-” Loki began, the word withering on his lips upon finding the bartender at the other end of the bar. 

Wouldn't he do anything to stop killing Thor?

Loki slipped a cigarette out of his suit pocket, lighting the tip with a whisper of seidr. He brought it to his lips and took in a slow drag, trying to lose himself to nostalgic whimsy. That night the frailty of mortals was just depressing. Loki exhaled casually, releasing a smoke ring between his practised lips. 

“You shouldn't smoke in here,” a voice behind Loki said. 

“Mmm,” Loki hummed noncommittally, lips still wrapped around the cigarette. 

“Although the service is terrible, so might as well,” the person laughed thickly. 

Loki choked on the next inhale of smoke, recognition settling like lead into the pit of his stomach. 

“You okay?” came the same voice, followed by an affectionate pat to Loki's back. 

He knew it was Thor, but turned anyways to regard the man sliding into the stool next to him. He could always be wrong. He could always walk away. But if Thor had come to the bar all on his own, dragged there by some irresistible magnetic pull, what were the chances that just leaving would work?

“Rough day? I know the feeling. Next drink's on me friend,” Thor said with a pleasant smile. 

Wouldn't he do anything to stop killing Thor? 

-

“Do you believe in fate?” Loki mumbled when he was on his twelfth shot. Perhaps he could get too intoxicated to kill Thor. Thor certainly couldn't stop him. By this time it had also dawned on Loki that he couldn't stop himself either, so self-sabotage it was. 

“Like some things are meant to happen and you can't stop them?” 

“Yes.”

“Not really, but if that were true, it wouldn't really matter I guess,” Thor said with an open shrug.

“Why not?” 

“Well it would happen anyways. What would my believing matter?”

“So you believe if I walked out that door right now, and we did not exchange names or numbers, that we would see each other again?” 

“Well, only if we were fated to meet each other.” Thor slid his hand over Loki's on the bar. “I could be eternally stuck with someone much worse I suppose,” Thor said with a teasing grin.

“No you could not.”

“Come back to my place,” Thor said, mistaking Loki's rare honesty for returned repartee. 

Loki arched a single eyebrow at Thor, bemused by how he courted his own undoing. “No point in testing fate,” he admitted eventually. 

-

“This might hurt a little,” Loki said as he stretched out harmlessly on Thor's bed. “Although I have never asked you before so I am uncertain if it does.” His fingers trailed the cotton sheets, failing to distract himself from the resignation. “And I do not intend to ask now.” 

“I've done this before. I'm not worried,” Thor said from his place in the doorway. 

“How perceptive,” Loki's eyes narrowed slightly in the darkness. “and yet simultaneously not.” 

Thor chuckled softly, leaning against the door frame. “Why's that?”

“It is exhausting to wait for years to make a good impression and then after being so careful and cautious, you do this,” Loki replied flippantly. 

“Do what?”

“Try and fuck me,” Loki snorted. His voice was so very far away. He could hear it like someone else was using his mouth to talk, worsening with every moment he slipped deeper into detachment.

“That a problem?” Thor said, wearing his usual cocky smile. 

Loki rolled onto his stomach in a single movement. “Come here,” he demanded.

Thor obeyed, approaching the bed and dropping to his knees in front of it. 

Arguably Loki's path had always been going down, leading straight to hel, but in that moment Loki stared at Thor and the number of times he had killed him stalled on the tip of his tongue. Loki's eyebrows furrowed. 

If he couldn't remember, had it ever really happened? 

Was he really killing Thor?

Everything went downhill rather quickly after that. 

-

Sometimes Loki sought Thor out. 

Other times he waited and let Thor find him. 

It always ended the same. 

No matter who Thor had been born to or what he lived as, it was always the heir of Asgard that stared defiantly up at Loki in those final moments. 

-

“I may not have the world at my knees,” Loki said as he tipped Thor's head back. It was just the two of them, alone in Thor's bedroom, like so many times before. No one was coming. Loki had long ago stopped holding out hope that they would. No one would stop him. It was just him and Thor, doing this, for the rest of forever. 

“But I have come to realize I have you,” Loki said as he stroked Thor's cheek with his thumb. He tilted Thor's head to the side, staring blankly at his perfect face, consistently replicating itself through every reincarnation.

“I finally have you,” Loki whispered in time with the tensing of his fingers, guiding a blade into Thor's neck. 

Loki's face emptied of emotion in time with Thor sputtering and choking on his own blood. 

“And I must admit, that is so much better,” Loki said to himself. There was no one left anymore to hear it.


	6. Chapter 6

The problem with having Thor Odinson was that Loki could now lose Thor Odinson. 

For the briefest of moments Loki paused, lips hesitating on the rim of his coffee cup. 

Might that be better?

He stiffened the newspaper in his hands, pupils tracing over the words printed upon it without registering them. 

Time had made Loki pliable. No longer did he merely live amongst the humans, collecting their more tolerable customs like baubles. Instead he replicated the patterns of their fleeting lives with a detached eagerness and keen eye for authenticity. It was such petty games, taken up out of boredom rather than respect or sincerity, that brought Loki to the coffee shop day after day. He harboured a treacherous attraction for the monotony that would kill him, if it could. 

Of utmost fascination to Loki was how the mortals wrapped themselves in superficial relationships built on a shallow familiarity and a widely shared, but never spoken, rule to repeatedly reference weather conditions. The human that took his coffee order often asked, more than anything else, if it was raining outside yet. Must everything be so shallow to cope with the temporariness they were haunted by? 

How strange it must be, to be temporary. 

Loki's eyelid fluttered in time with tilting back his cup, caffeine sloshing against the back of Loki's throat without him tasting it.

The chair across the table creaked. 

Something knocked into Loki's newspaper, denting the pages inward. 

Loki lay the paper flat on the table, smoothed it out, and glanced up at the person who had bumped it. He frowned at Thor's presence. 

The ennui of reincarnation was grating; Thor being born again and again, stuck in a permanent cycle of never learning, never growing, never really being, gnawed at the heart someone had once told Loki he probably had. 

“Sorry,” Thor said with a sheepish grin. He pulled his laptop into the space directly in front of him on the table. 

“It is fine,” Loki replied with a clipped voice. 

“Wasn't anywhere else to sit,” Thor said. 

Loki nodded in response. He picked up his newspaper and opened it to a random page.

“Sure is crowded in here today,” Thor said after a minute. 

Loki arched a single eyebrow but said nothing, not bothering to look up from his paper. 

Having complete control over Thor's life meant there was nowhere higher for Loki to go, no better feat to accomplish, and everything to lose. Loki just hadn't lost it yet. 

-

Twenty uneventful minutes later Thor packed his laptop into his shoulder bag and picked up his coffee. “Bye,” Thor said.

Loki glanced up. “Goodbye.”

Loki watched Thor walk away with mild interest. It had been a very long time since Thor had lived beyond their initial contact. Loki refused to get his hopes up though. 

His brother was still courting death. 

-

“Hey man, I'm just leaving. If it's just you, you can have my seat,” the human sitting beside Loki said. 

Loki glanced up, face crystallizing in emptiness at Thor's sudden appearance. Loki had returned to the same coffee shop but had purposely taken the last seat at an otherwise full table. 

Human or immortal, the fates didn't care; they still bowed to the will of Thor Odinson.

“Thanks,” Thor said with a genuine grin. 

Thor slipped into the chair beside Loki, saying, “hey again.” Thor was alarmingly close, every exhale warm breath brushing along the skin on Loki's face. 

“Hello,” Loki responded stiffly. 

“How're you today?” Thor asked.

“Fine.” It gave Loki some satisfaction to not return the polite human gesture, purposely withholding idle banter from Thor. He expected Thor to get the hint and stop talking like the last time.

“Anything interesting in the paper?” Thor asked, voice rising with the eager words.

“Yes.”

“That wasn't in there yesterday?” 

Loki glanced up slowly, rewarding him with a sliver of attention.

“It's the same paper that you were reading yesterday,” Thor admitted with a smug grin, obviously pleased with himself. 

“How very observant of you,” Loki replied sarcastically, voice dry. 

“I also know you're not actually reading it,” Thor added. 

“Why do you presume that?”

“It's open on the sports page.” 

“I could like sports.”

“Sure friend. Sure,” Thor laughed softly, at Loki's expense of course. Numberless lifetimes and some things never changed. Thor pulled his laptop out of his bag and placed it on the table. He turned it on, humming softly as he waited for the log in screen to come up. 

Loki put down his newspaper, closing it dramatically, and turned in his seat to face Thor. “You have my attention now.”

“Huh?” Thor said, glancing back at him. 

“Why ever would you speak to me if you did not want it?” Loki said in his usual clipped, even, voice. The strangeness of the encounter grated under Loki's skin, urging him to recklessness. His fingers twitched where they rested on the back of the chair. 

“Manners? I noticed your lack of them. Maybe I wanted to show you what they're like,” Thor teased with a quick to return grin. 

“It is considered polite to tell me I am not actually reading? To announce your uninvited staring along with the offence of calling me a liar?” Loki said sternly. 

“Right,” Thor said, even though he didn't look it. “Sorry sir.”

“Sir?”

Thor looked Loki up and down, making a show of lingering on the expensive suit. The neatly done tie. The blanched collared shirt. “Mister? Um, what do you want?”

“Loki.”

“Huh?” 

“My name. You might as well use it when you insult me so casually,” Loki said as he picked his newspaper back up, forcibly ignoring the uneasy tension worming in his gut. 

Across the expanse of their countless encounters Loki had never before told Thor his name.

“Loki,” Thor repeated firmly. “Nice to meet you Loki.”

“The feeling is not mutual,” Loki replied dryly, turning a page. 

“What, not going to ask for my name?” Thor teased.

“It is unnecessary for our relationship.”

“Oh, and what kind of relationship will that be?” Thor drew out the words in a knowing way. 

Loki sighed pointedly, recognizing the inevitable end of this particular turn in Thor's infinite human lives.

“Kidding, kidding,” Thor said. That got Loki's attention. 

Thor winked at him, casually saying, “you're not my type.”

Loki stared at him, genuinely surprised. “Good,” he heard himself reply eventually, barely believing the word. 

And for the first time in a long while, things might actually have been good.


	7. Chapter 7

“Remove that, I am reading,” Loki grumbled, waving away the coffee cup Thor had placed in between Loki and his newspaper when he had taken his usual seat in the shop, across from Loki. 

“We both know you aren't,” Thor teased with a lazy smile.

“Very well. Remove that. I am not reading.”

“Just thought, since I'm obviously the smarter out of the both of us, hey, don't give me that look, that you could use some help with your logical deductions,” Thor said, crossing his arms confidently on top of the table. 

Loki ignored him, making a point of looking over the coffee cup at his newspaper. 

“Fine, fine, if you must ask, I'll help you out even more. The coffee cup has my name on it, so now you can save yourself from awkwardly asking me what it is.” 

“That relies on the false presumption that I am interested in what your name is,” Loki replied stiffly. 

Thor feigned a hurt expression, clutching his heart. “You wound me sir,” he said, grabbing the coffee cup from in front of Loki. “I don't know if I'll be able to survive the injury.” Thor's hand dramatically flourished to his forehead. He exhaled sharply and fell forward on the table. “Unf,” Thor huffed. “I'm dead.”

Loki leaned forward and took the cup of coffee back. “Good, then you will not mind if I have this,” he said flatly, taking a sip. 

Thor leaped up, having a miraculous recovery, and snatched his cup back from Loki's hand. “Begone, don't steal my coffee, or my germs will defend it,” Thor exclaimed. 

“You had not taken a sip yet, so you are just stuck with my germs then, Thor,” Loki replied offhandedly. 

“Huh?” 

“I saw your name on your cup the very first time you sat down in front of me,” Loki said, taking a sip of his own coffee. “I know it is Theodore, but really, it is only a few letters off from Thor, so forgive me for dropping them, but I find I prefer the alternative so much better.”

And Thor, who some time ago, in a life he might never remember, had learned to never question Loki, merely nodded. The beginnings of a smug grin flickered across his face.

-

In the coming weeks Thor didn't call Loki a monster. 

He didn't accidentally see Loki performing seidr. 

He didn't come on to his brother, leaning in for a lethal kiss or inviting death back to his place. 

Fatalities were replaced with casual encounters, slipping into their routine as simply as if stifling tedium had been meant for them all along. 

Thor and Loki waited for a new pot of coffee to brew, leaning against the wall by the cash and trading puns.

Thor showed Loki the Sudoku in the back of the newspaper he never read. 

Loki purposely left books on the seat across from him, saving Thor a seat. 

Once they played chess when someone forgot a set in the shop. 

Loki mastered the art of small talk, tracking the weather and the intricacies of Thor's human life. Buying furniture. Paying rent. Laundry detergent. 

Rhythms of aimless conversations ebbed and flowed between them, a comfortable monotony Loki settled into against his better judgement. 

Where had that judgement gotten Thor before? 

If limiting his relationship with Thor to an hour every other day was the cost of keeping Thor alive, Loki could do that. He could skim the superficial and hide every yearning for intimacy and closeness under the mask of an acquaintance. Loki would pay for Thor's life with all the brotherly gestures that had been the highpoint of his life in Asgard. 

They were pretty intentions, surprisingly well meaning, but they were built on a rotting foundation. Some things Thor carried with him from life to life, body to body. For Thor Odinson, monotony would never be enough. 

-

“Want to get a drink?” Thor asked.

Loki held up his coffee in his right hand, cheering it to an imaginary host before taking another sip. 

“Like an alcoholic drink,” Thor laughed. 

“I believe if you ask nicely, and do not mind being taken advantage of by the price, you could have one without leaving the coffee shop,” Loki said.

“Right, right,” Thor gave in with a grin that didn't match his eyes, those searching Loki's face for signs of where he had gone wrong. 

-

“My friend bailed on me and I have an extra ticket to an indie show for tonight. Want to come?” Thor asked three days later. 

“I have to work late,” Loki said without looking up from his paper. The lie came effortlessly, sliding from his tongue as if he was born into deceit. 

“I don't think I've ever heard you talk about your job before. What do you do?” Thor asked, unable to mask his own curiosity. 

“If I told you I would have to kill you.”

“Yeah okay, fine, keep your secrets,” Thor grumbled with a playful scowl. 

“I intend to,” Loki replied, not rising to the bait. 

Thor leaned forward on the table between them. “You know, I'm going to assume the worst if you don't tell me.”

“And you are free to do so.”

“Coming in every day, staring at a paper you don't read. Ordering a coffee you don't even like,” Thor trailed off, eyebrows raised for emphasis. 

“Why do you believe I do not like the coffee?” Loki said with a bored tone, not really interested in the answer. The response was only intended to humour Thor. 

“You don't taste it. You just chug it. I'm assuming you drink it for the caffeine because you often look tired, dark circles under your eyes, and the more you drink the better a mood you get in. So, the caffeine. You could get that somewhere else. In a single shot of espresso or in an energy drink, but you never have either of those things,” Thor said, pausing to smile smugly at his own deductive reasoning. “So you want the caffeine, but you also want the illusion of a reason to come in here, which you get from a large black coffee. Something to help you bide your time while you sip. A cover, but what are you covering up?” 

“Inventive,” Loki said flatly, praise chiding.

“Perceptive you mean,” Thor said eagerly, not at all deterred. 

“It is a nice little story Thor.”

“I think it's more than that.” Thor winked. “But don't worry, your secret's safe with me,” he whispered, drawing back to his end of the table and making a gesture of zipping his lips closed. 

Loki nodded at Thor with an empty face, failing to ignore the dread that clawed him up from the inside. Had Thor always been this clever? Or had Loki simply never taken the time to notice? 

Thor shrugged, taking a sip of his own coffee. “Whatever it is, I don't care.” 

“Do not say things you do not mean,” Loki replied blandly. 

“I mean it,” Thor said, face growing serious. “I really don't care.”

“That is a terribly stupid thing to say.”

“That's okay, you're smart enough for the two of us,” Thor grinned. 

Loki bit his bottom lip, fighting to keep a blank face. 

Loki avoided the coffee shop for the next week.

-

“Made a new friend?” Loki asked when he finally came back to the coffee shop, sliding into the empty seat across from Thor. He couldn't hide the edge from his voice as his eyes flicked over the full coffee, untouched, on the table in front of where he now sat.

“It's for you,” Thor said, smiling softly as he glanced up to meet Loki's gaze. 

“How did you know I would come today?” 

“I didn't,” Thor laughed. “I may have been doubling up on my caffeine when you were away. Has definitely made for some hard to sleep nights.”

“Why?”

“I figured you'd eventually show up, and I probably did something to make you stay away in the first place, so,” Thor said, gesturing to the coffee. “Peace offering, if you'll take it. We don't have to talk about it, or we can. Up to you.” 

Loki picked up the coffee and took a sip. It was warm but no longer steaming. 

“I was trying to think of something you might actually like to drink, but you've never told me, so you just get to drink that thing you dislike but drink anyways out of habit,” Thor teased. 

“I would not have it any other way,” Loki replied. 

“Me either.” 

-

The routine resumed, an endless amount of casual conversations about which scarves were in season. The price of gas. The weather. Absolutely nothing of any importance, but for Loki it was the only thing that mattered. 

Sometimes Loki could trick himself into thinking Thor was in Midgard on a vacation or learning about the realm; they were merely meeting for coffee in the centre of their busy lives, the whole world slowing down to allow them these fleeting precious moments, catching up in ways they never could before.

Then Thor would say something about his house or his job and Loki would be jolted back into reality, face blank, and nodding evenly. 

Thor was not on vacation from his princely duties; this was life in the wake of Thor's greatest failure and Loki was just salvaging the pieces. They should have gone right into the scrap heap. 

They never should have shattered.

-

“Are you happy?” Loki asked as casually as he could manage. 

“Yeah,” Thor replied automatically.

“Really happy. Actually happy,” Loki pressed. 

“Yeah,” Thor said with a shrug. “Why, aren't you?”

“I do not know,” Loki admitted before he could stop himself. 

“What's there to be unhappy about?” Thor asked, putting down his book to give Loki his full attention. “Something bothering you?”

“No.”

Thor waited it out, smiling softly. 

“Do you ever wonder if you were meant to do something else, be something else?” Loki said after a time.

“No, can't say I've had that thought before. Maybe I wasn't meant or fated to do what I'm doing now, but I'm doing it anyways, and I enjoy it,” Thor replied.

“Promise?” Loki's eyes held an unusual expression Thor couldn't read. 

“Yeah, I promise.”


	8. Chapter 8

“What happened to you?” Loki said with an uneasy frown. Thor slipped into the chair opposite him at their usual table, a purple bruise blossoming beneath his right eye. 

“You know those sports you pretend to like? Well I actually like them,” Thor teased with a grin. “It's nothing. Just a little football game with some friends in the park. They can get a bit rough.” 

“Hopefully not too rough.”

“Don't worry big brother, I can handle it myself,” Thor quipped. 

Loki's face froze at the seemingly harmless metaphor. It wasn't quite right, but it was still too close to home. 

“Anyways, if you're so worried about it you can come supervise next time I play,” Thor said.

“And why would I do that?” Loki asked, feigning indifference. 

“Because I don't know anyone more threatening or scarier than you,” Thor teased, eyeing Loki's gangly body. “And I am sorely in need of protection.” 

“What is in it for me?”

“Well, if someone does hit me again, you'll get to see it.” 

“Oh, I would not want to miss that,” Loki said, forcing a lazy grin. “Perhaps.”

“Good. You can bring orange slices.” 

Loki arched an eyebrow. 

“You know how moms bring orange slices to games? Gosh, you really don't know some things do you?” Thor teased, platonically patting Loki on the shoulder. 

“More than you,” Loki said with a faint smirk. 

“With that attitude, you'd probably give orange slices to the other team. Cheering them on, if I know you,” Thor said, rolling his eyes dramatically. 

“Oh yes? And I can make a sign declaring my allegiance to the other team, or just show up in a cheer leading outfit,” Loki said, recalling the ridiculous human television programs he had subjected himself to in his early boredom on Midgard.

“If you've got a cheer leading outfit you are willing to wear, please do. I'd love to take pictures so I can sell them on the internet.” 

Loki levelled Thor with an appropriately threatening glare. 

“We're playing again tomorrow, at four,” Thor said with a laugh. 

“Very well.” Loki stood up. “See you at four.”

“What, no coffee? No small chat?” 

“Have to take my cheer leader outfit to the cleaners. It is quite dirty,” Loki said with a smirk.

-

It was a mistake; Loki realized that the next day upon walking into the park, mud sinking into his expensive shoes. It wasn't the price, he'd used seidr to get them, but the equally unsettling sensation that he didn't quite belong. It was an all too familiar sensation as Thor looked up from his crowd of friends in the middle of the field and waved at Loki. 

Loki waved back, settling down on a park bench with a terse frown as soon as Thor returned to his game.

-

“No cheer leading outfit? I was genuinely looking forward to it,” Thor greeted Loki after jogging over to the benches once the game had finished.

“Another time perhaps.”

“So do you live by the coffee shop?” Thor asked, wiping a towel across the sweat on his forehead. 

“No,” Loki replied too quickly. 

“Then why are you there all the time?” 

“My friend lives there.”

“I never see you at the coffee shop with anyone,”

“I live with him.”

The difference settled between them, itching between Loki's shoulder blades where he just couldn't reach. There was no word for it exactly, but whatever it was, Loki couldn't slither his way out of the conversations like he usually would.

“You just said you don't live by the coffee shop and he does, but you live with him. That doesn't make sense.”

“I am sleeping on his couch. Between places,” Loki replied brusquely. “Is the interrogation over now?” His eyes narrowed at Thor. 

“Are you uncomfortable about it or something? Like embarrassed?” 

Loki waved him off, turning to go. Thor kept pace with him. 

“I do not want to have this conversation,” Loki said. 

Thor stepped in front of Loki, cutting him off. “Loki, do you live anywhere? Like do you have a house? Or even just one you want to go back to?”

The question cut too deep, the wound too raw. It flickered across Loki's face in a brief surge of pain. “No.”

“Let's go. You're staying at my place tonight.”

“Thor,” Loki said with a frown. 

“Nope, you're coming. This way, let's go,” Thor said with a tentative smile, willing it to be mimicked back. Loki forced one in return. 

“Thank you.” Loki suspected that was the appropriate thing to say. 

-

“You know you're awfully well dressed for someone without a house,” Thor said with a laugh on the walk back to his place.

“Perception is everything,” Loki replied flatly. 

“I don't know. I'd take a warm bed over a suit.” 

Loki rolled his eyes, but he allowed Thor to swing an arm around his shoulder. 

-

“Make yourself at home. There's instant coffee in the cupboard if you want some. Go through the fridge,” Thor said when they reached his townhouse. Before Loki had officially met Thor at the coffee shop he had invited himself into Thor's house regularly while he was at work. Loki would pick up Thor's plates, touch his receipts, and riffle through his cabinets. He'd stopped once Thor and him had been on a first name basis and returning then the house was much the same as Loki remembered it, aside from a few objects out of place. “I'm going to take a shower,” Thor shouted over his shoulder, leaving Loki by himself in the hallway.

Loki wandered into the kitchen, opening the shelves at random, the feel of them heavy in his hands. Loki found Thor's kettle and resigned to making himself a cup of coffee, hoping the familiarity of their one routine might settle his nerves. 

It felt like the first time all over again, the possibility of killing Thor so close it was suffocating. 

-

Thor padded into the kitchen, towel around his waist, chest bare, and dripping water on the floor. He picked up the mug of coffee Loki had made and took a deep sip from it. 

“That would be mine,” Loki said with a roll of his eyes. 

“Should have made two.”

“Well I did not.”

“It's saliva, who cares?” Thor said with his usual reckless voice, somehow pleasant. 

“I do,” Loki said with a frown, reaching for the mug before Thor could take another sip. 

“You're going to spill it,” Thor warned. 

Loki's fingers grabbed at the handle anyways, tugging it impatiently. 

Thor pushed Loki backwards, pinning him against the wall before the sloshing liquid went over the edge of the mug. Thor pinned Loki effortlessly, like he used to, but unlike before Thor only managed because Loki was too alarmed to by the sudden sensation of Thor's hands on him. 

“Why is it such a big deal to you,” Thor said, inches from Loki's face. 

“It is not,” Loki replied quickly.

“So sharing saliva is suddenly not such a big deal?” Thor grins. 

“Correct,” Loki missed the intonation in Thor's voice. 

“Okay,” Thor said, leaning forward and planting a chaste kiss on Loki's lips.

Loki stiffened against the wall, body freezing.

He's killed Thor for less. 

“Can you at least move so I know you're not dead? Maybe saliva really is a big deal if I've killed you.” Thor's cheery voice felt wrong, violently dissimilar from the thoughts that were going through Loki's mind.

“Haha, good joke,” Loki said, pulling away carefully, making sure to touch his brother as little as possible, and extricating himself from the bracket of Thor's arms.

“Loki?”

“Hrm?” Loki replied, casually trying to lean against the kitchen counter. 

He's killed Thor for this before. 

This, because it keeps happening.

“I was just messing around, why are you acting like this?” Thor asked, confusion flickering across the face Loki knows so well.  
Maybe it's supposed to keep happening. 

“Do you, do you like me?” Thor asked slowly, scanning Loki's body for a response, for anything to work with. 

“You are insufferable.”

Thor set the coffee mug on a table. “That didn't answer the question,” he said, walking over to Loki.

One touch and it would be over. One touch and they could both forget all of this, leaving Loki to hope that the next time around their brief moment of happiness together might last longer before one of them ruined it. 

Thor stopped in front of Loki, faces close together, but not quite touching. “You do, don't you?” Thor whispered.

Loki stared back at him unblinking, heart hammering in his chest.

“It's okay,” Thor said softly.

“It really is not,” Loki replied, mouth dry. 

“If this is the way I get to have you, to keep you, I'll take it. I want it,” Thor said, pressing their foreheads together. 

“I am going to hurt you,” Loki mumbled, barely able to concentrate against every one of Thor's exhales that blew onto his skin. Somehow he still smelt like ozone. 

“I'm stronger than you give me credit for,” Thor said, hand slipping back to cup the nape of Loki's neck, thumb tracing across the sharp indent of his cheekbone. “And so are you,” Thor exhaled shakily, closing the words with a kiss, that for the first time, Loki didn't fight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic was a journey in so many ways and I can't believe it's over. 
> 
> If there is enough interest in a sequel that is definitely an option. I have some loose plans to write a second fic focused on Thor and Loki's life together, with all the porn, domesticity, and dealing with the consequences of Loki's stupid decisions that didn't make it in the first time around. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading and I hope you got something out of it. 
> 
> -
> 
> Series title from the song "If I Had a Heart" and fic title from "O, Death."


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